NHS England London has released the latest data update on the clinical impact of the ransomware cyber attack against pathology services provider Synnovis on 3 June.

The data for the sixteenth week after the attack (16-22 September) shows that across the two most affected trusts, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, six acute outpatient appointments and five elective procedures had to be postponed because of the attack.

This means so far 10,152 acute outpatient appointments and 1,710 elective procedures have been postponed at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

NHS London Medical Director Jane Fryer said: “The hard work of staff across the NHS over the last few months means we are now back to near-normal service levels across south east London. I would also like to thank our patients for bearing with us as we tackled the effects of the cyber attack in June.

“Testing services have been returned to GPs across all south east London boroughs, while mutual aid arrangements have enabled us to maintain planned operations and transplants for our patients across south east London.”

The transfer of GP services back to Synnovis following the cyberattack has been successfully completed, with all GPs having access once again to the full range of pathology testing services, including routine tests. Synnovis is working closely with healthcare colleagues to address the backlog of non-urgent tests in primary care and is making good progress.

Progress to restore blood transfusion systems is going well, and this service is expected to resume soon. To date, Synnovis has focused on restoring systems on the basis of clinical priority. Now that most are back up and running effectively, attention can turn to restoring administrative systems which enable the smooth operation of Synnovis’ business, such as HR and procurement.

Call for O group donors continues

O negative and O positive donors are still asked to urgently book appointments at donor centres. People can visit blood.co.uk or call 0300 123 23 23 to book an appointment.

Advice for the public

NHS organisations across London continue to work in partnership to ensure people receive the critical and urgent care they need, when they need it. Advice to the public remains:

• Continue to attend booked appointments unless contacted to say otherwise. Patients will be kept informed about any changes to their treatment by the NHS organisation caring for them. This will be through the usual contact routes including texts, phone calls and letters.
• Continue to use NHS 111 through the NHS App, online or on the phone for non-urgent care.
• Urgent and emergency services continue to be available to those who need emergency care and people should access services in the normal way by dialling 999 in an emergency.
• Patients waiting on blood tests are advised to keep an eye on Swiftqueue, the online booking service, as more appointments become available.

As more detail becomes available through Synnovis’ full investigation, the NHS will continue to provide updates. A helpline has been set up to support people affected (0345 8778967). More details on the incident, including a questions and answers section, are also available on the NHS England website: https://www.england.nhs.uk/synnovis-cyber-incident  

Background

NHS London impact update based on provisional data reported by trusts and organisations involved. Please note all numbers quoted are drawn from unvalidated management information; these have been provided in the interests of transparency.

Updates will be provided on a weekly basis as the incident continues. The next update will be on Thursday 3 October.

Planned care (day case and inpatient treatments)

Across King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, five elective procedures were postponed (there was one cancellation in the week beginning 9 September). None of these were cancer treatments.

Transplant impacts

No organs were diverted for use by other trusts

Maternity

No c-sections were postponed in the last week

Outpatients

Six outpatient appointments were postponed in the last week (there were also six last week)

No community outpatient appointments have been postponed in the last week.